Story at a glance
- A new study from two researchers at Binghamton University in New York could shed more light on what happened to water that once existed on Mars’ surface.
- Geological Sciences and Environmental Studies Professor David Jenkins and former graduate student Brittany DePasquale’s research claims some of the planet’s missing water could be stored underground in a clay mineral called smectite.
- The new research helps shed light on at what temperatures smectite might be able to exist.
Missing water on the red planet might be stored in a clay mineral, according to new research from Binghamton University.
The remains of dried up riverbeds, basins and channels on Mars’ surface show it once had flowing rivers and streams, but now the planet appears to be “bone dry.”
Some of Mars’ water is locked into its polar ice caps, according to National Geographic, but the remainder might be trapped underground in a commonly found clay mineral called smectite, a study from Binghamton University Geological Sciences and Environmental Studies Professor David Jenkins and former graduate student Brittany DePasquale claims.
“Up until recently many people, including myself, assumed that any water formerly existing on Mars was now present as ice stored at the polar caps and as subsurface ice,” said Jenkins, whose research was published online in the scientific journal “Icarus” late last month.
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“It is really just in the past several years that there has been enough data collected from satellites orbiting Mars to determine that there is not enough ice, nor enough loss of water vapor from the surface of Mars, to account for even the lower estimates of the amount of water that once existed on Mars. Once we saw that ferrous-iron-smectite, the least thermally stable form of smectite, was stable up to temperatures of about 600°C at 30 km depth, it became clear that smectite might actually be a significant reservoir for the ‘missing water’ on Mars.”
Jenkins’ research has provided the maximum temperature in which “ferrous-iron-rich” smectite can exist the lower it is underneath Mars’ surface, which could help scientists better understand how deep the mineral can occur on the planet.
“Although this study helps affirm the importance of clay minerals as a potential reservoir for water on Mars, it certainly is not the final word on this subject,” Jenkins said in a statement. “The more difficult question of the total amount of clay minerals in the surface or near-surface environment of Mars is yet to be determined with the precision needed to really confirm that clay minerals may be the dominant water reservoir on Mars.”
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